Tuesday

Apr 23, 2019 at 9:43 AMApr 23, 2019 at 9:43 AM

With only a half dozen films made under his direction before his newest, “Long Shot,” Jonathan Levine has already been all over the genre map. In chronological order, “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane” was a horror film, “The Wackness” told a coming-of-age story in a setting of drug dealing and hip hop, “50/50” was a dramatic comedy about cancer, “Warm Bodies” concerned a zombie romance, “The Night Before” was a comedy with both adventure and fantasy trappings, and “Snatched” focused on a mother-daughter bonding experience.

The title “Long Shot” could refer to Charlotte Field (Charlize Theron), the Secretary of State who is determined to run for president. Or it could be about the opposites-attracting couple - Charlotte and Fred Flarsky (Seth Rogen), the journalist she hires as a speech writer - who couldn’t possibly be good for each other in a relationship but seem to be on that course. The film is a straight-up romantic comedy, something that Levine has been meaning to get around to.

He spoke by phone from a sidewalk near his home in Los Angeles, while walking his dog Louis.

Q: Do you recall the experience of realizing that you wanted to be a filmmaker?A: I do, and strangely enough it was not from watching movies. It was watching WWF. I was around 11, and I distinctly remember that I got so immersed in the drama and the pageantry of wrestling that I started to notice camera angles and things like that. But it wasn’t just the wrestling. It was stuff like Rowdy Roddy Piper doing “Piper’s Pit,” and all of these things that would support the dramatic narrative. Also, I grew up in New York, and there was a video store that would deliver. So, I quickly went through all the normal “11-year-old” movies. I probably went from Steve Martin movies to softcore porn movies and then it was like, “Hmm, ‘Taxi Driver’ ... I don’t know what it is, but it sounds cool.” So, I remember sitting in my friend’s house watching “Taxi Driver.” That was definitely one of films that made me want to make movies.

Q: Speaking of “Taxi Driver,” you landed a job as an assistant to Paul Schrader, who wrote that film, then you studied at the American Film Institute (AFI), then made a couple of shorts. But breaking into features is always difficult. How did you manage to score “All the Boys Love Mandy Lane?”A: It was an incredible stroke of luck. A couple of my colleagues at film school wrote that script, and they had connected with some kids at USC who had seed money to make movies. I had already made a thesis film at AFI that was getting some attention on the festival circuit, and “Mandy Lane” was a gig that myself and about a dozen other young filmmakers in town were up for. I was just lucky enough to know the writers. A lot of my colleagues didn’t even want the gig because it was a horror movie. I loved the script, but I also believed that horror is a great first step in a directing career. The movies are inexpensive, they can make a lot of noise, and they allow you to show off as a filmmaker.

Q: What led you to directing “Long Shot?”A: I had worked with Seth and Evan Goldberg a couple of times. (Rogen acted in both “50/50” and “The Night Before,” and he co-produced both of those films with Goldberg.) “Long Shot” was a script they had been trying to make for many years. They first showed it to me when I was making “Warm Bodies,” and at the time I wasn’t interested. But then Charlize, who is such a great actor, came onboard, and you don’t often get to make a modern pop romantic comedy against a big world-hopping backdrop. It felt like it could a fairytale that was reminiscent of movies I grew up loving, like “Working Girl” or “Tootsie” or Cameron Crowe’s movies.

Q: You have a history of making eclectic choices of songs for your soundtracks, from Jimmy Cliff’s “Sitting in Limbo” in “Warm Bodies” to Van Morrison’s “Madame George” in “Snatched.” What led you to putting Frank Ocean’s ultra-hip rendition of “Moon River” in this film?A: Frank Ocean is probably my favorite modern artist, and his album “Blonde” is probably my favorite album in the last 10 years. For me that song and the way we used it is a perfect distillation of the tone of this movie. You’re taking this Hollywood sweeping romantic anthem and updating it in this very modern way. With the movie, we’re doing a new twist on an old tried and true thing, but we’re also pushing it in new directions, the same way that song does. The scene with that song is my favorite part of the movie, where I had the opportunity to show the look on Fred’s face as he’s achieved this dream of his, falling for this woman who he’s been pining after since he was young. Being able to live in the emotion of that for a moment, and have that music play, that’s why I wanted to make movies in the first place.

“Long Shot” opens on May 3.Ed Symkus writes about movies for More Content Now. He can be reached at esymkus@rcn.com.

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